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ITALY-US-POLICE-MURDER-CRIME
Funeral held for Italian officer allegedly stabbed by US teenagers
SOMMA VESUVIANA, Italy, July 29, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Hundreds of people
gathered Monday for the funeral of an Italian police officer stabbed to death
in an alleged confrontation with two American teenagers that has sent
shockwaves through the country.
Grieving family, colleagues and friends filled a church in Somma Vesuviana,
the hometown of officer Mario Rega Cerciello, 35, who suffered multiple knife
wounds on Friday in an attack that the suspects claim was in response to a
drug deal gone wrong.
Two Americans, Gabriel Natale Hjorth, 18, and Finnegan Elder, 19, have been
charged with aggravated homicide and attempted extortion following the
killing in Rome’s upmarket Prati neighbourhood.
Crowds applauded as the hearse bearing Cerciello’s coffin arrived at the
funeral near Naples, to the solemn tolling of church bells.
The casket, draped in the Italian flag, was carried by police pallbearers
into the church as a military trumpet rang out.
Deputy Prime Ministers Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio were among the
government officials attending the emotional funeral.
A photograph of Cerciello and his wife were placed on the coffin, along
with an AC Napoli football shirt.
The slain officer had recently returned from honeymoon. He was stabbed 11
times with a bayonet knife with an 18-centimetre blade, Italian media
reported.
According to police, the suspects say they did not realise that Cerciello
and his colleague were officers.
They thought they were friends of an alleged drug dealer from whom the pair
had stolen a bag which was supposed to contain cocaine but turned out to be
crushed aspirin, according to media reporters citing investigators.
The victim of the theft tipped off the police, but when two officers in
plain clothes went to arrest the two American tourists, one of them allegedly
pulled out a knife.
“We have remembered Mario in tears: all the lovely things, the moments
spent together. But also the tragedy, a terrible affair which cannot go
unpunished,” the mayor of Somma Vesuviana, Salvatore Di Sarno, told
journalists.
The US embassy to Italy tweeted its condolences and said it shared “the
grief of (Cerciello’s) family and the police”.
– ‘Immature’ –
The funeral comes amid controversy over a picture of the suspects
blindfolded and handcuffed while under questioning.
Giandomenico Caiazza, head of a lawyer’s union, said the treatment of the
suspects might compromise the interrogation, which police say included a
confession.
Neither of the suspects “have shown they have understood the seriousness of
the consequences of their behaviour,” Rome judge Chiara Gallo said in her
order for the pair to be remanded in custody, according to media reports.
She said the teenagers from California showed “an immaturity excessive even
for their young age”.
The pair were being held at Rome’s Regina Coeli prison.
Police said surveillance cameras helped them track down the pair to their
four-star hotel where they arrested them. Their bags were packed and they had
been planning to fly home the same evening.
Officers allegedly found a large knife hidden in the false ceiling of their
hotel room.
“There is no doubt that the victim of this tragedy is Mario,” Prime
Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Facebook.
However, he said blindfolding suspects “does not comply with our principles
and judicial values.”
BSS/AFP/RY/1930 hrs